At first glance, there wasn’t.
She checked the toilet first, and while it wasn’t as clean as she would have liked (she’d have to talk to the kids about that), there was no face. She looked in the sink, glanced around at the walls, peered into the mirror.
All clean.
Relieved, she exhaled deeply. She let her gaze wander over the remaining sections of the room.
The face was on the shower curtain.
It was there for only a second—long enough for her to identify it as the same one in the other bathroom, long enough to note that it was formed from abstract design elements on the curtain itself—and then it was gone, rendered invisible by a minute shift in perspective or a slight change in light. She screamed anyway, a gut reaction, and this time Julian heard her. In seconds, his heavy steps were thundering up the stairs.
“Claire!” he called.
She stepped into the hall.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded, heart still pounding. But his presence gave her courage, and she went back into the bathroom to once more examine the shower curtain. She looked at it from the left, from the right, from straight on, from a crouched position.
He followed her in. “What in the world are you doing?”
Claire stood, faced him. “Maybe we shouldn’t have bought this house,” she said.
“What?”
“Have you considered the idea that it might be … haunted?”
Julian just stared at her.
“James doesn’t like the basement,” she continued quickly. “I don’t, either—”
“It’s dark,” he interrupted. “It’s small. It’s claustrophobic. But it’s not haunted.”
“Megan and her friends were all screaming—”
“They’re teenage girls on a sleepover who were playing with a Ouija board and telling ghost stories. What did you expect?”
“What about your record? And what about those things that keep getting moved around?”
“Are you serious?” He frowned at her, obviously annoyed. “You’re acting like a three-year-old. First of all—”
“I saw a face in the toilet downstairs. And on the shower curtain here.”
“Oh, my God …”
“The one in the toilet’s still there!”
“Show me.”
Grimly, they walked downstairs, Claire in the lead, Julian muttering disbelieving, disparaging remarks under his breath. When they reached the bathroom, the face was still there, and it looked as disturbing as ever.
Julian shook his head. “That’s just a stain. It happens to sort of, almost, kind of, semi-look like a face. But it’s like those people who claim to see Jesus in rusty drips on a water heater or Mary’s outline on a fogged-up storm window. Those things aren’t really there; people just want to believe that they are.”
He reached for her, but she pulled away. “I don’t want that face to be there! But it is!”
“Calm down. You got scared. You spooked yourself, and now you’re all rattled. I’m just trying to explain that there’s nothing supernatural going on here.”
“Don’t patronize me!”
“I’m not,” he said, in a voice indicating that he was. “But our house isn’t haunted, and that thing”—he gestured toward the toilet—“isn’t some ghostly manifestation. It’s hard-water deposits on porcelain. Whatever you saw upstairs was obviously some trick of the light. The basement—”
“The basement’s creepy.”
“Come on. Act like an adult, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t see you ever going in there.”
“There’s no reason to.”
“You know, my dad even had a nightmare about our basement.”
He threw up his hands. “Oh! Well! If your dad had a dream, then it must be true!”
“There’s something in this house, Julian.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“You’ve felt it, too, and you’re just pretending that you haven’t.” She glared at him, and there was a loaded pause between them. She saw understanding dawn in his expression. He knew what she was about to say. “What if it’s—”
“Don’t say it!” he ordered. “Don’t even think it!”
“We’re both thinking it!”
“No!” Julian spun around and strode away, not looking back, heading down the hall, through the kitchen and out the back door, letting the screen slam shut behind him.
Claire stood in place, breathing heavily. That was unfair, she knew. It was the first time she’d done something like that, the first time she’d used Miles in that way, and instantly she regretted it. She didn’t even know what had prompted her to go there. They’d had bigger fights before, over much more serious things, and she’d never felt compelled to drag that part of their past into it. This was merely a disagreement about weird incidents in their house. Why the hell had she brought up Miles?
She knew why, but she didn’t want to admit it, even to herself.
Walking into the kitchen, Claire saw that Julian had made coffee, and she poured herself some. Her gaze was drawn to the closed door that led to the basement, but she moved next to the sink and peered out the window. She expected to see Julian pacing around the backyard, but there was no sign of him, and she wondered whether he had gone into the garage or the alley.
She wasn’t the type of person who ate when she was upset—quite the opposite—but she knew she should have some food in her stomach, so she made herself some toast. She kept thinking Julian would return while she was eating, but he didn’t, and he still hadn’t come back into the house by the time she’d dressed. He wasn’t usually one to pout—that was her province—and his absence worried her, but she knew that if she went off looking for him and found him, it would set off a new round of arguments.
Returning to the kitchen, she glanced out the window again.
No sign of him.
In her peripheral vision, she could see the basement door, and though she was still frightened, still spooked, she was determined not to be intimidated. Gathering her courage, she strode purposefully over, grasped the handle and turned it, opening the door. Before her, the steps descended into darkness, and though she could not help thinking of that—
grinning
—man she’d dreamed about, she reached for the switch, turned on the light and started down.
There was no man, of course, only the sealed cartons and sacks of junk that they’d brought down here to store. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to see, but looking around at the boxed overflow of their lives, the sense of foreboding she’d felt dissipated. Julian was right. There was nothing mysterious here. Only a small square room with a cement floor and walls that …
Frowning, Claire leaned forward.
Directly in front of her, above an overstuffed Hefty bag filled with James’s old Hot Wheels sets, was a darkened section of wall stained with patches of mold. Not unexpected in a damp cellar, but …
There was a face in the mold.
The same face she’d seen in the toilet. And on the shower curtain.
Claire stared at it. She knew how crazy this would sound if she told anyone—but it was true. And though the features in the toilet and on the shower curtain had been so rudimentary as to seemingly preclude specificity, this was the same face.
And it was smiling at her.
To her right, atop a junky card table that Julian for some inexplicable reason had insisted on keeping, were several old tools that someone had been sorting through and left out: pliers, a hammer, a screwdriver. In one smooth move, Claire picked up the screwdriver and strode forward, between the boxes, until she stood directly in front of the face.